


Acquisitions

by alpacamyhedgehog



Series: Librarians of S.H.I.E.L.D. [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Library, Gen, Gun Violence, Human Experimentation, Librarians, Origin Story, Original Character(s), Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., just a little bit of violence though, misanthropic librarian aesthetic, pre- pretty much everything else, so many original characters why why why omg, tiny baby superhero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-07-16 03:26:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7250104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacamyhedgehog/pseuds/alpacamyhedgehog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a librarian's job to help people, and Amy takes pride in carrying out that mission every day. But when the student with the unusual reference questions turns out to be a fledgling superhero, she begins to wonder if she can use her skills in a bigger way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There’s always that one person who gets under your skin. You know the one. You’re probably thinking of someone specific right now: that person who’s always asking the wrong questions at the wrong time, who thinks they can tell you how to do your job, who convinces everyone else that they know everything while only you seem to know the difference, who’s always rearranging the food in the refrigerator so can never find your lunch.

For Amy Rudaski, reference librarian at New Haven Public Library, there were a lot of people like that.

To her credit, she rarely complained about annoying patrons. If she did her research right, answered their questions the way they wanted, or sent them on their way with the right resources, most would go away and leave her alone. And it wasn’t too much trouble to redirect patrons who kept asking her where the bathroom was or if they could check out their monumental pile of crime novels at her desk.

But for the first time in her five-year career at the NHPL, she found herself getting really agitated with a patron who just wouldn’t go away.

His name was Marcus Adams, and he was a high school student. She knew she’d seen him before, doing homework in the reading area with the other harried-looking students, or walking to the circulation desk with a book under his arm, but other than his signature blue hoodie that stood out next to the maroon New Haven Hornets gear that his peers were wearing, he was unremarkable.

Thinking back, she remembered a few times when he asked her typical assignment-related questions, usually related to biology or computer science. If anyone had asked about him then, she would have said he was quiet, well-spoken, studious--maybe a little more so than most high schoolers she’d worked with before.

But his questions kept getting weirder, ever since he appeared in front of her desk one busy after-school period about two months ago, twisting the pocket of his hoodie and asking how meth labs worked.

Now, even the sight of his blue sweatshirt from across the room set her on edge.

She thought she had good reason to be uneasy around Marcus. In attempting to answer his queries, her research took a darker turn into the worlds of drug rings, weapons manufacturing, street fighting.

“It’s for a school project,” he insisted each time, but she wasn’t convinced.

She hated herself a little for wondering if he could be up to something. It wasn’t that she suspected hooded black youth of trying to overthrow society. Equal access to information for everyone was important to Amy, and she’d been trying to get the library to focus more on diversity since she was hired.

And it wasn’t like the kid was disrespectful by any stretch of the imagination. With him, it was all “May I ask you a question, please?” and “Thank you, ma’am” in a polite, half-whispered library voice that almost got drowned out in the hubbub of after-school hours.

Still, something about him suggested that he was more serious about these questions than he should be, that he might be using her answers for something more than school assignments or pure curiosity. 

After a few weeks, she confronted the library director, who, naturally, reminded her of the library’s patron privacy policy and implied that she might be overreacting (“Keep your cool, Amy. We can’t report every inquisitive high school junior who walks through our doors.”).

Amy tried repeating her boss’s words to herself, sometimes hissing it through her teeth when she saw Marcus approaching the desk. Sometimes it helped. Sometimes not.

It was when he asked her about battlefield first aid, a deep cut arcing over his cheekbone and a few suspicious dark stains on the sleeves of his hoodie, that she finally snapped.

“Is that blood?” She asked, pointing to his sweatshirt, her voice rising above her usual quiet tone.

When he shrugged in response, she felt like she had finally reached her limit.

“Look here,” she said as evenly as she could. “I don’t know what you’re up to, and technically I’m not allowed to ask, but if you don’t tell me exactly what’s going on, I’ll contact child protective services or...or...something.”

He sighed. “Like I told you, it’s just for school. I have a report due at the end of the term.”

“Like hell you do.”

Choosing to ignore the inappropriateness of her comment, she continued glaring.

“It’s not just that you’re asking how to stitch up a wound yourself when you walk in here looking like you’ve been through a meat grinder, it’s that all this comes after you’ve spent the past week researching knife fighting techniques! Have you even thought about going to the hospital or seeing a doctor?

Anyway, either you’re up to something, or you’re a lot more involved in this school report than any other student I’ve ever known.”

His eyes flashed with desperation--probably mixed with pain—and he let out another sigh that morphed into a whimper.

“I promise I’m not doing anything illegal! Please don’t call the police,” he added, almost frantically.

“Well, if everything’s ok, you should be able to tell me what’s going on. Right?”

Gosh, she hoped her persuasion would work. If she pushed too hard, this kid could probably get her fired.

He clamped his mouth shut in response and began walking away from the desk.

“Hey, you should get a doctor to look at that face,” she said before he was out of earshot.

He looked back and grimaced, still walking.

“Make good choices!” she called to him.

He was almost to the circulation desk by then, and her outburst turned several heads. The older lady sitting closest to the reference desk looked up from her Good Housekeeping and shushed her.

“Ah, sorry,” Amy whispered, feeling a hot blush rise from the back of her neck to her cheekbones.

That night she ordered Chinese takeout, made a cup of her favorite tea, and pulled out that new book on Renaissance architecture that had finally been catalogued the other day. Anything to remind herself to de-stress.

She had to start leaving her work at work, she reminded herself. She could relax now, enjoy the mood lighting, some quiet music, and an uninterrupted evening to herself.

The orange chicken was long gone, another cup of tea brewed, and a new chapter begun, when an insistent knock sounded at the door.

Instantly, her face lapsed into the sour expression she reserved for Really Annoying People. Specifically, library patrons who asked complicated questions right before her shift ended.

She opened the door to find an even bloodier Marcus standing on the doorstep of her apartment. New gashes and oozing scrapes decorated his face, and the hoodie was filthier than usual.

Dammit.

“Fine,” he said after a long pause. “I’ll tell you everything. Just let me in.”

“How did you find me?” she asked, her voice rising higher than she intended.

“Oh, gosh. I promise I’m not a stalker. I’m just really really good at listening. And I may have asked one of your co-workers. Crap, that sounded so much creepier than I meant.”

Something about his halting words and awkward fidgeting told her that he wasn’t planning to hurt her. Maybe he genuinely needed help? In any case, she was going to murder whoever was telling patrons where she lived.

“What about your parents? Aren’t they going to be worried about you?” She crossed her arms, still trying to look in control.

“I only have my nana. She has to work tonight, and she’s got four others to take care of. No time to worry about me.”

Maybe it was the puppy dog eyes or the unintentionally plaintive tone. Maybe it was the blood oozing across his too-young face, or the way he stood wincing with pain, arms folded protectively across his chest.

Whatever it was, something twisted in her gut that was neither squeamishness nor fear.

“I’m breaking every rule in the book and will probably get in trouble for it sooner or later, but get yourself in here, and I’ll help you clean up.”

Helping Marcus meant not only washing his face and making him hold ice packs to the darkening spots where he flinched when she touched him, but also getting him to remove his hoodie to clean the reopened cuts on his arms and back. Amy hastily threw the sweatshirt into the washer. If he’d let her keep it, she would mend those cuts and tears for him, too.

Then she realized that even if she kept the hoodie, even her extra oversized gray hoodie wasn’t going to fit him.

He was more muscly than she would have expected from a sixteen-year-old, let alone the well-spoken, nerdy kid she’d taken him for. His dark skin, interrupted by deep cuts fringed with blue fibers from the hoodie, shone almost bronze in the light of the kitchen.

She stepped back, suddenly unsure of how to proceed.

Marcus noticed her staring and gave her a misshapen smirk from behind the bag of ice that he was holding to his right cheek.

“Yeah, I know. It’s part of the story.”

Amy pushed the ice pack back into position with gentle annoyance.

“Well, tell me already then!”

He shifted his weight in the hard wooden chair. “You keep up with local news at all?”

“Somewhat, yeah.”

“A couple months ago, the police caught a drug ring at the high school. Remember that?”

“Ehh…sure.”

“And then not too long after, they broke up a meth lab.”

“Yeah, anonymous tip, and the people responsible were tied up and waiting for them when they got there. And then a few weeks later, they found a few illegal arms dealers the same way.”

He turned to look her in the eye.

“Well, that was me.”

She dropped the rag she’d been using to clean blood and sweatshirt fibers off his back.

“You’re…you’re a sixteen-year-old vigilante? That’s got to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You should be spending most of your time on homework and maybe a part-time job, not catching criminals and leaving them for the police like a cat dropping dead animals on someone’s doorstep.”

She stopped a minute to catch her breath and thought again. “Do you even get any sleep?”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “It’s a little more…involved than that. I don’t need that much sleep anymore.”

“Okay…?”

She reached for the tube of Neosporin that was sitting on the counter and began rubbing it into his cuts more aggressively than necessary. He winced.

“Fine, but you’re not going to believe me.”

“Stop stalling and get to the point.”

“At the beginning of the semester, my AP bio teacher kept me after school one day and told me that he’d been doing some experiments on his own—high-level stuff, trying to cure cancer, whatever—and asked if I’d be willing to help him out as a test subject.”

“Uh-oh,” Amy said

For her, this would have raised all kinds of red flags. You couldn’t just experiment on minors. Not without without extensive paperwork, waiver forms, permission slips, and the like.

But as far as she knew, these things wouldn’t even have crossed Marcus’s mind at the time, the little idiot. He’d probably agreed to help for the good of humanity, or to get more hands-on science experience. Maybe he’d been hoping this teacher would help him get a STEM scholarship for college.

“Not so much for me. But I found out later that he’d done this before. He picks kids from crappy backgrounds, kids like me, who have parents who wouldn’t complain to the school board, or who don’t have parents at all. And if they do complain, it’s not hard for him to pay them off if something happens.”

Amy was almost afraid to ask her next question.

“And did something happen to the other test subjects?”

“Yeah, everyone at least got sick. A couple of them are paralyzed now. One girl died last year. Nothing happened to me at first. Then, I started needing less sleep and more food. Little stuff—scars, cuts—healed really fast. And,” he continued, gesturing to his body, “I don’t work out. I’m a lot stronger than I look now. Like, a lot.”

She rolled her eyes. Typical adolescent male.

His gaze wandered over her apartment before settling on the heavy oak table she kept in her kitchen. He rose, leaving her still kneeling on the floor with the uncapped tube of Neosporin, walked over to the table, and picked it up as easily as if it had been a dinner plate. A couple of books slid off the table and hit the kitchen floor with a solid thud.

Amy gaped. She’d had to recruit three family members to help her scoot that table into the kitchen when she’d moved here. Now here was this kid, holding it at shoulder-height.

“Put that down,” she said finally with more exasperation than she felt.

He lowered the table, grinning.

“Okay, you’ve convinced me. But what’s with the whole student by day, super-powered vigilante by night routine? I mean, if I were you, I’d finish high school and then…join the military or something.”

He looked helpless for a minute before answering.

“Because—well, I guess I thought I could make a difference where I am right now. If you knew someone was doing something wrong, and you knew you could do something about it, wouldn’t you take that chance? I just—I noticed stuff going on at school, and it kind of went from there. I don’t like bullies.”

Now why did that sound so familiar?

Instinctively, Amy glanced into her living room, at the shelf where she kept the too-slim biography of Steven Rogers, the special-edition Captain America: The Life and Times of a Legend documentary, the pictorial chronicles of the Howling Commandos, the remastered DVD of Star-Spangled Man (the 1949 film starring Katharine Hepburn as Agent Peggy Carter), and even a little Funko Pop sporting the signature blue-winged helmet.

That weird feeling that had prodded her to let Marcus in the door blossomed into full-blown sympathy.

Slowly, thoughtfully, she rose from her spot on the floor and sat at her newly-positioned kitchen table, prodding another chair with her foot for Marcus to sit in.

“So,” she prompted. “Why tell me all of this now?”

“Well, there’s a little bit more going on. Just after I developed my—powers—the teacher who’d been experimenting on me went missing.”

She thought a minute.

“That sounds familiar. Do you know what happened?”

“No, only that I walked into his office for another round of treatment one day, and there were two men in suits waiting for me. They told me that Professor Harner had left town for a biochemistry conference and that he had asked them to give me my treatment.”

“Oh, that’s not good.”

“Nope. When they came at me with the syringe…”

He paused to wipe a hand across his forehead.

“Well. You gotta understand. I wasn’t used to having superhuman strength. I had a lot going on inside my head, too. I…I kind of lost it. Next thing I knew, both suits were lying on the floor, and they weren’t breathing. I honestly think I might have killed them.”

When he looked up from the spoon that he’d been twirling over and over in his hands, his eyes searched her face, and she thanked every gene in her body responsible for giving her a good poker face. It would take a lot more than possible manslaughter to make her lose her cool. She did have a real-life, sixteen-year-old superhero sitting in her kitchen, after all.

“I left the office and ran all the way home. And then, a couple hours later, I thought I should probably go back and see if they were really dead, in case I needed to get rid of...you know. Bodies. And when I got there, they were gone. That’s when I went through my teacher’s files and found the stuff on the other students. Only—it looked like someone had gone through the papers before. All my files were missing.

“After that, I had no idea what to do. After about a week, I realized that no one was going to arrest me if there weren’t any bodies, and I figured that I might as well put my skills to good use. And now you know the rest. Except—something was different tonight.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you know, I was doing my thing. I’ve been working on this gang in town—they fight with knives.” He wasn’t looking at her anymore but had been staring at the kitchen table like it was a TV screen.

“Hence the street-fighting research and the knife wounds.”

“Yeah. Anyway, tonight there were a couple guys kind of watching the fight go down from a distance. And,” he looked back up at her with a glint of fear in his eyes, “they had guns.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Guns? Do you think they’re with the men who tried to take you earlier?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? I got out of there as fast as I could. Which is pretty fast,” he added with a smirk.

She rolled her eyes, trying to look unimpressed.

“What I’m trying to say,” he continued as he rubbed the back of his head with his palm, eyebrows raised, “is that I need backup. I mean, you’ve been helping me this whole time without knowing it, but I need someone who knows what’s going on and has my back if something goes wrong. You could be that person.”

Amy raised herself out of her seat and leaned against the edge of the kitchen counter with a thoughtful frown.

Even just aiding a vigilante might land her in jail, and she wasn’t sure how many other laws she’d have to break along the way.

Plus, the disappearance of Professor Harner and the men in suits put her on edge. Marcus was out of his league on that one; clearly someone had an eye on him, and it was only a matter of time before he found himself in a situation that he wouldn’t be able to escape from with a few well-aimed punches.

At the same time, she might be able to protect the kid—at least she could try. He needed another person to keep an eye on him, someone familiar and trustworthy. It said a lot that he picked her, a crabby librarian he barely knew, to share his secret. Didn’t he have anyone at home or school he could trust?

And then…she couldn’t help thinking about her job.

Sure, she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life behind the reference desk of a public library, but it was stable. She knew what to expect. Beyond a few technical glitches here and there and a weird research request once or twice a week, there were no surprises in her life. She didn’t know what kind of changes were ahead if she decided to help Marcus, and the thought settled in her stomach as hard and sticky as a peach pit. 

Still, she couldn’t help wondering if this beat-up kid was offering her a chance to do something more.

It wasn’t that her job wasn’t rewarding: she helped people every day. But she couldn’t fight drug dealers or put gang members behind bars. Marcus could, and she could give him the tools he needed to succeed.

Wasn’t that the whole point of being a librarian?

As she made her decision, she left the room to move the blue hoodie from the washer to the dryer.

She could almost feel him staring after her as she walked away.

Good, she thought. Let him sit there and stew for a minute. That was for showing up on her doorstep unannounced, for dragging her into this mess. 

She took her time with the sweatshirt, then paused to tidy a few things in the laundry room before returning to the kitchen.

“Fine,” she said.

A warm, sticky grin lit up Marcus’s entire face. If ever he looked like an innocent puppy, Amy thought, it was right now.

He let loose a celebratory yell, and she winced, almost covering her ears.

“I have a condition,” she added when he quieted. “If I’m going to go along with this, you need to let me tell one other person.”

He frowned but waited for her to speak.

“I have a friend who knows a thing or two about men in suits with guns, and she may be able to help.”


	2. Chapter 2

“I’ve been standing on my own for 14 years now. Pretty sure I know how to stand right,” Marcus protested.

From her perch on an abandoned table in the empty warehouse, Amy suspected that he was just trying to get a rise out of her, but his exaggerated eyeroll clinched the whining teenager look.

She leaped off the table and moved to stand in front of him.

“Shh,” she hushed, holding out a silencing finger. “Shut up and let me lend you my knowledge.”

He smirked, and she took a step back, folding her hands in front of her.

“Patience, my young padawan. Hold that pose for five more minutes, and then I’ll take a look at those stances we’ve been working on.”

“Yay,” he squealed with mock enthusiasm before giving her a sour look.

More or less satisfied, she leaned against the table with her back toward the battery-powered space heater she’d brought with her.

It may have been a sunny Saturday afternoon, but even with the heater and her heavy winter coat, she never warmed up in the November chill that permeated the warehouse. She had to admit, she envied Marcus, if only for the superhuman muscle and metabolism that allowed him to train in the cold without a jacket.

In true young superhero fashion, he’d chosen an abandoned building as a headquarters-slash-training facility, and despite her complaints, Amy couldn’t think of a better solution. She wasn’t going to let him train in her apartment, where he would almost certainly break something, and working together at the school gym, community center, or even the library conference room would raise suspicion.

A late-twenty-something reference librarian talking with a high school student wasn’t uncommon at the library, but anywhere else their friendship (partnership?) would be seen as questionable, if not inappropriate.

If anything, Amy felt like she’d become an Alfred to a very young Batman.

In the past two weeks since Marcus had shown up at her apartment, she’d spent her evenings and weekends either glued to her phone for text updates on his “missions” or helping him clean himself up when he dragged himself back to the warehouse with fresh injuries but brimming with pride.

She’d also tried following him on foot a few times, watching from a safe distance. Assessing his fights had convinced her that while Marcus had the advantage of strength and endurance, his lack of strategy and fighting expertise made him less than efficient.

So, Amy did what Amy did best. She did her research.

Three library books, ten interlibrary loan requests, a few YouTube videos, and countless blog posts from writing reference sites later, she had compiled a makeshift mixed martial arts training regimen that she hoped would improve his fighting style and reduce risk of injury.

“I’m only doing this because I’m sick of mending you all the time,” she had told him.

This was pretty much true. She had honed her first aid skills as quickly as she could with each gash to stitch, and it was getting old.

It wasn’t that she was squeamish—never that. His cries and pained grimaces certainly didn’t help, though.

She reminded herself that all of his injuries healed with super-human speed and that in another day or two, these deep cuts would be little more than scar tissue. Still, it was in the lamplight of the warehouse when she spent the early hours of the morning making sure each wound healed straight and clean, grumbling under her breath about infection, that he seemed the most vulnerable and childlike.

Sometimes she thought she saw traces of tears on his face when she finished.

Sometimes she thought she would rather sew up her own wounds than pull a needle through his flesh one more time.

Every day, she reminded herself that all this was temporary.

But the fact was that it had been two weeks since she’d called June Bachman, her friend at the S.H.I.E.L.D. library, for help, and she hadn’t heard anything back from her yet aside from the occasional Google chat complaining about lazy agents and red tape. 

When she’d met June in grad school and they were both working toward their MLIS degree, she had known that the other student already had a job at a government library. She didn’t know what S.H.I.E.L.D. was or what it did.

All that changed this past year, however, when the Avengers saved New York City from an alien attack. In the weeks that followed, the news reported that S.H.I.E.L.D. was the organization that handled the Avengers, and rumors developed that the agency was covering up other cases of powered people—at least monitoring them, if not recruiting for similar task forces.

The thought that superhumans existed and that there might be more of them than the heroes of New York had interested Amy, but until Marcus had shown up, it had been more of an abstract curiosity than anything else.

Superheroes, like natural disasters, happened to other people.

Now that she had to babysit a superhuman, Amy wanted to make use of as many resources as possible. At the very least, she hoped June could tell her whether the men following Marcus were S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, paid to keep an eye on him to keep him from harming himself or others. If so, he was probably safe for now, and if not—well. Maybe S.H.I.E.L.D. could help with that problem, and Amy could just fade into the background again.

“I’ve been standing like this for at least five minutes. Can I practice kicks now?” the superhuman in question asked, interrupting Amy’s thoughts with a tone that sounded suspiciously like a childish whine.

She sighed. “Fine.”

Gleefully, he began battering the punching bag that she had brought in for him and that they had hung from one of the metal beams above.

She was about to warn him to slow down and make sure his form was correct when the door swung open to admit what looked like an anthropomorphic shadow.

Dressed in black from head to toe with a dark coat that swirled around him in a rush of cold air, the figure strode toward Marcus with a gait that seemed more like a glide than anything else. An eyepatch contrasted with the glitter of his one eye, completing the air of mystery.

One quick glance told Amy that Marcus looked as startled as she felt, although to be honest, she was as much shocked by the fresh blast of cold as by the sudden appearance of this shadowy visitor.

The man held out his hand for the kid to shake.

“Marcus Adams? My name is Nick Fury,” he said distinctly, “and I’m here to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative.”

Amy sighed with relief. Finally, here was someone trustworthy from S.H.I.E.L.D. She recognized the director from several press conferences that followed the Battle of New York that summer. 

Fury seemed to notice her for the first time but only gave her a scant glance.

“Ms. Rudaski, I’d like to speak with your protégé privately.”

Something in his tone gave her the impression that she was out of her league.

There was only so much she could do to mother-duck Marcus, and as much as she felt like standing her ground and staying to make sure he was okay, she also didn’t want to seem like a helicopter...well, librarian...in front of the director of a national intelligence agency.

She fiddled with the cuff of her jacket in pretense of looking at her watch.

“Yes, of course. I, um…I forgot I had signed up for a weekend shift at the reference desk, so I better get over there,” she lied.

She switched off her heater and picked it up gingerly.

“Marcus, I’ll see you at the library later, ok?”

She barely waited long enough for him to nod.

Once she was out of the warehouse, she inhaled the icy air and let it pierce her throat and lungs with bitter cold, willing it to clear her mind. Her head felt like it was stuffed with wool, her limbs leaden. By the time she had driven to the library and parked in her usual spot behind the building, she realized she felt…lost.

This couldn’t be it, could it? Marcus would leave to join the Avengers, and she would go back to playing spider solitaire at work instead of checking her phone every few minutes to make sure he was doing ok. She could spend her evenings and weekends at home or with friends instead of babysitting a sixteen-year-old vigilante, and she wouldn’t have to worry about patching him up anymore.

Oh, and she could get a decent night’s sleep. That would be nice.

It just didn’t seem right. Fifteen minutes ago, she was looking forward to the time when Marcus and his snarky comebacks and his never-ending injuries would be out of her hands. Now, she didn’t feel so excited about a return to normalcy.

Once in the library, she sent away the volunteer at the reference desk, a woman with gray-tinged hair who looked relieved to return to shelving books.

Amy thought she could understand the volunteer’s reaction. Saturday afternoons meant fewer research questions and more frazzled parents with loud children, more people searching for a novel or DVD to keep them distracted until Monday morning.

She rifled through her purse for her glasses cleaning cloth and used it to wipe the dust off her computer screen. She straightened the keyboard and positioned the mouse just so. She took all the pens out of their mug and rearranged them, returning them to their rightful place one by one so they were splayed like chrysanthemum petals.

When this was done, she sat back in her chair and glanced around the library at all of the people milling around the stacks—and suddenly felt obsolete. She had worked herself out of a job when it came to Marcus, and now it was time to get back to the real world, the world without danger or suspicious wounds or foolhardy superheroes, the world where she had to spend another shift answering that age-old question: “Where’s the bathroom?”


	3. Chapter 3

Fury had given Marcus 24 hours to make a decision about joining the Avengers.

Honestly, Amy was surprised that the sixteen-year-old wasn’t jumping at the chance to join the elite superhero team that had been all the rage among kids and adults alike for the past year. She even remembered seeing a Black Widow badge pinned to Marcus’s backpack, so it wasn’t like he didn’t care.

Instead, she sensed hesitation in his voice when he came to the reference desk to tell her about his talk with Fury.

“Oh, come on!” she burst out when he finished. “Aren’t you even a little bit excited?”

“I dunno…I mean, it’s cool and all, but I just don’t see why they’d want me. Something just doesn’t seem right about it.”

He picked at the pens in her mug until she slapped his hand away.

“You have powers; of course they’d want you. I mean, last week you tore off a car door and used it to knock out a gang member. That has to count for something when it comes to fighting aliens…or whatever it is they do.”

She gave him an earnest smile until the corners of his mouth lifted, just a little.

“Besides,” she continued, “I think it would be good for you to be around other people with powers, people who can train you better than I could.”

“You know, I think you’re trying to get rid of me.”

She thought she could almost hear a bitter edge to his joking tone.

“No! I just…I just think it would be good for you. What we’re doing here, we’ve been reinventing the wheel. There are people who have been through this before, and it’ll be good for you to learn from them.”

“Whatever, I’ll think about it. But I’m going out again tonight.”

“Why not stay home for once? You could probably think more clearly in your own room than you could while kicking bad guys in the face.”

He shook his head. “If this is my last night to do this, I want to make it count.”

Good grief, he sounded as earnest as the idealistic hero of an action movie. She rolled her eyes at him.

“You’re obnoxious, you know that?”

“Why you gotta be so mean?” He smirked, arms folded across his chest.

“Where are you even going tonight? Didn’t you see the headlines this morning? The police found the last of that street gang on their doorstep last night...thanks to you,” she added in a whisper.

“You’ll see,” he replied, turning away once more.

*

Later that night, Amy met up with Marcus at the warehouse, and the two prepared for one last night of crimefighting.

That is, Amy expected him to tell her that this was the last night, but he still hadn’t said a word about whether or not he was going to accept Fury’s offer.

The air had grown colder since that afternoon as evening deepened into frigid night, but the portable heater provided a pocket of warmth in the drafty warehouse, and a battery powered lamp cast long swathes of light over the walls.

Amy leaned against the table and watched as Marcus warmed up, shadows flickering across his face and body like spiderwebs.

“I’m coming with you,” she said finally, as undid her hair and repinned it more securely.

“Tonight, or to the Avengers?” he spoke in between kicks. “Because I gotta admit, a librarian superhero would be pretty sweet, but they didn’t ask you.”

She snorted.

“You know what I mean. I want to make sure your form is good, and we’ll debrief after, just like every other night. If you’re going, I can’t send you off looking like some hick from the sticks who doesn’t know how to fight.”

“You know, I’m pretty sure Mr. Fury said they’d train me.”

“All the more reason to make a good impression.”

Of course, Amy got her way and found herself trailing after the young hero’s frustratingly long-legged stride. She lagged behind naturally but tried to keep him in her sights as they plunged through the darkened streets of New Haven.

On nights when she followed behind, she always kept a safe distance and tried to find a hiding place that would also provide her with a way to escape unseen in case she needed to run for help. Thanks to Marcus’s sheer strength, and in spite of his lack of fighting prowess, she had never needed to do that yet.

It had, however, been a convenient way to pull him aside when he needed to catch his breath, or when he needed a pep talk disguised as criticism of his fighting stance. At one point last week, one particularly nasty thug had started to chase Marcus, and Amy had reached out of the alley where she was hiding and pulled the kid into the shadows by the sleeve of his hoodie. Once the thug had passed by, she shoved Marcus out behind him, and he caught the guy by surprise.

She smiled at the memory as she slipped behind a dumpster. However annoying he might be, she had to admit they made a pretty good team. She’d miss that.

The unexpected sentimentality quickly dissolved when she realized what kind of hiding place she’d chosen.

Greasy pizza boxes spilled out of the dumpster near where she was standing, tainting the already rank scent of garbage with the odor of cooking oil and stale pizza crust remnants. The smell jarred her into reality, reminding her that she hadn’t been paying attention to Marcus.

Quickly, she scanned the darkened street for his silhouette.

He’d led her out of their usual, back-alley, darkened storefront haunts and into a residential area—actually a pretty nice subdivision. Amy wasn’t familiar with this neighborhood, but the houses they’d passed looked like the kind of two-story cookie-cutter houses that cluttered New Haven’s nicer suburban areas.

Now they were in front of an apartment complex, still in decent condition, if the cream-and-brown paint didn’t exactly shout that it had been there for about as long as Amy had been alive. Her dumpster stood forlornly in the middle of the parking lot (Seriously? How far did people in this building have to walk to get rid of their trash?), but she could still see Marcus approaching the building by the light of the streetlamps.

He was going up to the entrance of the building.

What was the idiot going to do, knock politely on someone’s door and then beat them up? Probably, she thought.

Once he was silhouetted by the glow of the front windows, he turned around, and she almost thought he was going to gesture at her. Was he trying to tell her to come with him, or to stay put—or to watch out?

She never found out.

Shadows darted from around the building and surrounded Marcus. There were three—no, four—of them, and they were carrying guns bigger than any Amy had seen in real life. Considering she lived in a town where half the population celebrated hunting season more enthusiastically than Halloween, this was saying a lot.

Suddenly, blinding searchlights illuminated the attackers, and more figures in black tactical gear scuttled out of nowhere and into the light where Amy could see them.

“STAND DOWN. THIS IS S.H.I.E.L.D., AND WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED,” one of the newcomers barked into a megaphone.

Amy was too far away from all of this to see whether or not the figures did have the S.H.I.E.L.D. emblem on their vests, but the logo was clearly emblazoned on the helicopter that was now contributing to the confusion with a loud whirring sound.

In all of this, Marcus had collapsed in a heap of blue hoodie and jeans on the sidewalk in front of the apartment complex.

Had he been shot, or just tranquilized? Amy wasn’t sure, but she did know that this was proving to be too much of an adventure for her.

Take cover first, she thought. She could make sure Marcus was safe once the agents had taken care of the guys with guns. 

Summoning all the strength she had left, she dove into the dumpster and pulled the lid shut behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be my favorite chapter ending I've ever written. Actual Trash Queen Amy Rudaski.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Out of the dumpster, and into the landfill. Poor Amy.

“You used him as bait?!” Amy yelled at the agent who had spent the past twenty minutes trying to explain why her young friend had been taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.

Despite her efforts to control herself, she found her voice rising to an outraged shriek, and she felt hot blotches of color seep across her face.

She had spent the past hour or so trying to recover her dignity, which she suspected she had left behind in the dumpster. A couple of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had discovered her still in hiding after the outside commotion had quieted down, and they’d had to help her climb out.

To make matters worse, she thought she recognized this particular agent’s voice as the one she’d heard on the megaphone. Some irrational part of her blamed Megaphone Agent for recent events.

He sighed heavily and ran a hand over his balding head.

“Would you like me to see if Director Fury is available to talk with you, ma’am? I’m sure he would be able to address any concerns you might have.”

“You do that,” she spat out before she could think of a more biting reply.

Megaphone Agent rose from his chair with all the weary relief of a retail employee who’d been asked to get a manager to deal with a difficult customer.

Once he had gone, Amy was left with her own thoughts in the small room. Suddenly, the impact of everything that had happened, and the fact that it was very late at night hit her like a loaded book cart that had spun out of control. Her vision of the table and now-empty metal chair before her blurred, and she felt like her ears had been stuffed with cotton balls.

What time was it by now? 2, maybe 3 am? Ever since she’d insisted on following the agents to the large plane (What had they called it? A helicarrier?) where they had taken Marcus and gone inside at their invitation, it seemed like time had been sucked into a vacuum.

Once on board the helicarrier, Amy had had words with the agents until they agreed to show her what they’d done with Marcus. He was in some sort of white cell with wide windows, through which she could see two scientists swathed in matching scrubs and masks and gloves swarming around him.

He was sleeping, the agent beside her had said. It hadn’t taken long for the tranquilizer to wear off, so he was being sedated now.

Amy’s eyes had traveled from the IV in his wrist to his face, which looked younger than ever now and somehow very fragile. The stubborn set of his jaw was relaxed; his eyes, which usually burst with determination or brewing mischief, were shut. She had almost expected him to sit up and laugh at how seriously she was taking all of this.

Her throat had constricted painfully, and it took a few minutes to realize that she felt like crying. Instead, she glared at the nearest agent until he led her away to a small, soundproofed room with pockmarked walls.

She suspected this was some sort of interrogation room, but, if anything, she had been the one interrogating Megaphone Agent rather than the other way around. She had to admit that he had been nothing but patient with her, in spite of his infuriating tendencies to beat around the bush and use government acronyms without bothering to explain what they meant.

There were no clocks in the room, and she had left her watch at home.

Ah—but she did have her phone in her pocket. She pulled it out and checked the time. 2:47.

More time passed. It was 3:22 by the time Fury entered the interrogation room and seated himself across from her.

Between the director’s intimidating, one-eyed gaze and an increasing awareness of her own exhaustion, Amy felt cowed.

“Ms. Rudaski, it’s been a long night for all of us,” Fury said at last in a gravelly, no-nonsense tone. He had folded his arms and stretched one long leg out in front of him, bracing himself with his heel. “So I’m sure you’ll understand when I ask that we keep this conversation as short as possible.”

“Of course.”

“Agent Henderson told me that he already briefed you on your friend’s condition and that he will remain in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.”

Oh, so Megaphone Agent did have a name. She suspected that, in the surge of anger that had kept her awake and in control of herself, she might have missed that.

“Yes, sir. But I’m having trouble understanding why.”

Fury showed no signs of weariness or exasperation. Instead, he leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table, a sudden, unreadable expression flickering across the one eye.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. has strong evidence that a rogue organization known as Centipede has been performing experiments on human volunteers.”

“Any number of pharmaceutical companies do the same,” Amy retorted, a fresh surge of irritation rising at the delay.

“Well, I can’t tell you exactly what Centipede’s goal is, but they’re not trying to cure cancer. You’re aware of the super soldier programs that led to Captain Rogers’ transformation during World War II?”

She nodded.

Chapter Three of the biography spent five pages on the programs and their successes and failures, she remembered, a flush rising up her throat at the reminder that she’d basically memorized the book.

“Centipede is trying to create super soldiers illegally, under the radar. You’re an intelligent woman, Ms. Rudaski, so I’m sure I don’t need to explain what kind of threat this would be to national security if any of their research falls into the wrong hands.

Thanks in part to the information you gave us, we have reason to believe that Stanley Harner, a biology teacher at New Haven Public High School, was connected to Centipede and that Marcus Adams was one of his subjects.”

He paused, gauging her reaction.

“So,” she replied, measuring her words carefully, “you’re telling me that Marcus is a super soldier, and you’re taking him in because he’s a security risk?”

“We’re taking him in because he’s in danger. Centipede isn’t going to let one of their first successes escape so easily. The agents who attacked and tranquilized him tonight were with Centipede, trying to bring him back in. According to our surveillance, they’ve been studying him from afar until they decided to recapture him for further testing. It was only a matter of time…we just forced their hand. S.H.I.E.L.D contact with Marcus spooked them enough to try to bring him in early, and we were ready for them.”

“You did use him as bait.”

Fury made a deep-throated noise.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. captured two associates of a criminal organization and protected a boy—your friend—from getting kidnapped. I’d say that makes us the heroes of this story.”

Only to kidnap him yourselves, Amy wanted to retort. She swallowed those words and decided to try a different angle.

“So you don’t want him to join the Avengers after all.”

She felt her temper rise just thinking about how Fury had lied to Marcus earlier. What kind of bastard would get a kid’s hopes up like that?

“What are you going to do with him?”

“I never said he wasn’t going to be an Avenger,” he countered. “But he does need some training, and we have all the resources to provide that. We also need to run some further tests on him. Other known Centipede experiments have been…less than successful.”

Amy fidgeted, tracing circles on the steel table with one fingertip.

“People have died,” Fury emphasized, leaning forward even more.

“I know.”

They lapsed into silence, and she tapped her finger on the tabletop for a while.

“You’re going to keep him indefinitely, aren’t you?”

“An agent has already spoken with his grandmother. As far as she knows, S.H.I.E.L.D. is offering him a work-study scholarship with the possibility of a job when he graduates.”

“Sounds illegal, not letting her know what’s really going on.”

“It’s not without precedence.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” She rose from her chair, still facing him. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing more I can do. Thank you for meeting with me, Director.”

He held up a hand to stop her.

“Just hold on for a minute, Ms. Rudaski. I wanted to ask your advice on something.”

Amy was vaguely aware that she was being flattered, but at this point, she was too tired—and, yes, pleased—to care. She returned to her seat and folded her hands in front of her.

“Since the Avengers Initiative came into play this summer, my agents have been finding themselves forced into new roles and responsibilities. Where they used to be skilled researchers, they now have to spend more time chasing, babysitting, and sometimes fighting powered people with very little time or energy to do much prep work. I need to figure out how to delegate some of their responsibilities to other departments. Do you have any thoughts on how I could do that?”

“Expand your library,” she replied, perhaps a little too quickly.

He raised an eyebrow at her but waited for her to continue.

“Well, I’m friends with June Bachman, your archivist. She’s always talking about how underutilized the S.H.I.E.L.D. library is.”

The eyebrow arched even higher. Amy knew she should probably stop, but she rambled on, fueled by sleep deprivation and the presence of a listening ear.

“You have so many untapped resources in that library. Old records and papers that could be digitized and put in databases so the agents can access them, things like that. Plus, librarians are trained researchers regardless of subject, and if you hired more of them, they could help your S.H.I.E.L.D. agents prepare for their field work more efficiently.”

Fury cracked a professional smile.

“I like where you’re going with this, but I just don’t understand the point in hiring a bunch of bookworms who’ve spent years of schooling to learn how to check out a book.”

Amy felt an angry heat surge past her ears.

“With respect, sir,” she shot back before she can stop herself, “any fool can check out a book. It’s what happens to get the book on the shelf, and how to find exactly the right book, that requires schooling.”

Suddenly, Fury laughed, and the sound echoed throughout the interrogation room as if a particularly large, dusty book had been cracked open on the table before them. The abrupt noise shocked Amy into the realization that she had just sassed the director of a national intelligence agency.

After the man paused to catch his breath, he spoke.

“She was right. You’ll do just fine at S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Sir?”

“Ms. Bachman gave me the same input a few months ago. As we speak, the finishing touches are being put on a new annex of the Triskelion campus in D.C. that will serve as an expanded library and research center. I already have a top-notch archivist and digitization expert, but what we really need is a head of research.”

He stopped a moment, but Amy simply studied his face, wondering if the sleep deprivation was playing with her ears.

He leaned forward and spoke slowly with an irresistible smirk.

“I’m offering you a job, Ms. Rudaski.”

Her head spun, and all her limbs suddenly felt weightless. The heck was he saying?

The grin lines deepened on Fury’s face, if that were possible.

“What, you expected to go back to your reference desk after all of this?”

“Well, yes.”

“There are two kinds of people in the world, Ms. Rudaski: those who shy away from a challenge, and those who rise to the occasion. Everything I know about you so far has me convinced that you’re one of the latter.”

“Wait, what do you know about—” she began, but he waved a hand to hush her.

“You may seem like a quiet little librarian who likes her books and her rules, but when it comes to protecting someone like Marcus, when you can get the right information to the right person for the right reasons—well. Without you, that kid would have ended up a Centipede guinea pig at best. I might as well call you a hero in your own right. So no, I don’t think you’d be content to go back to your quiet little life when you could keep going.”

He paused, settling deeper in his chair.

“What I’m offering you is basically a chance to do what you’ve been doing with Marcus but on a bigger scale and in an official capacity. You’d be joint head of the library with Ms. Bachman, in charge of a state-of-the-art research facility for some of the nation’s best intelligence workers, not to mention an elite squad of superheroes. Plus, you would be in charge of curating the largest known collection of materials about superhumans.”

Amy’s head swam. She sat still, a little stunned, and waited for Fury to continue, but the silence in the room hinted that he was finished.

His gaze was attentive, gauging her response. Out of her remaining ounce of stubbornness, she tried to keep her expression as calm and vacant as she could.

“I’ll have to consider your proposal, Director.”

“Of course. Take as much time as you need.”

She squinted at him.

“No 24-hour time limit? No S.H.I.E.L.D. agents lying in wait in case Centipede shows up?” She fought the urge to add, No benevolent kidnapping?

Fury laughed again.

“I’ll have an agent drive you home as soon as possible, and then we’ll be on our way. Ms. Bachman can help you get in touch with me when you’re ready.”

Instead of feeling annoyed that Fury was ignoring her comments, a wave of relief swept over her at the thought of finally going home. She nodded, her head feeling heavier by the second.

The next few minutes slipped by, and she soon found herself trying to stay awake while giving directions to her apartment to Megaphone Agent as he drove a S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue vehicle that looked like a Humvee but was clearly more highly evolved.

Finally, she was standing outside of her apartment in the crystalline pre-dawn darkness, alone at last but with the distinct impression of something looming behind her.

She looked over her shoulder and saw nothing but the bumper of the Humvee as it rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. Maybe it was just the sleep deprivation, combined with the shock of Fury’s job offer.

She hated making decisions. It made her feel stuck--like she would lose no matter what she chose to do.

With a shake of her head, she banished the thought and reached for her keys. It was early Sunday morning, and she had an entire day to herself to sleep off the events of the past hours. 

Any major life changes would just have to wait.


	5. Chapter 5

When she wasn’t supervising the removal of the archive files to the Triskelion’s shiny new library annex, June Bachman spent the better part of two days refreshing her gmail inbox.

She hadn’t seen Amy for, what, a year and a half? But they still chatted pretty much every day.

On days when she was the only person in the archive for hours, alone with the dusty shelves of books and boxes and filing cabinets, it was a relief to see that little dot next to “Rudaski, Amy” turn green.

With a ping, a chat box would open up on her screen, filled with the latest news from a public library reference desk in a sleepy Midwestern town hundreds of miles away. Last week, someone had left a large moving box full of donated knitting patterns at the reference desk before Amy’s shift...and one of the other librarians had seen who had brought it in. Last month, a circulation clerk had tried to feed her cat treats.

What a different world from the one June lived in, filled with dry government documents and brusque agents and always so many secrets.

Since that helicarrier had returned from New Haven, though, the dot had stayed gray no matter how hard she stared at it.

She had reasons for wanting to hear back from Amy. For one thing, the new library was so close to opening, and they still had no head of research. For another, Fury had offered Amy the job at June’s suggestion. 

A young reference librarian with little experience in the field and no background in government work didn’t sound like a good fit for the job, Fury had said at first.

But June had spent the better part of grad school collaborating with Amy, and she knew that her reference skills and old-school no-nonsense librarian vibe was exactly what S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new research center needed.

So when Amy had called her about the young supersoldier, June took the opportunity to call in a favor. She suggested that Fury meet Marcus in person--which he was all too eager to do--and asked if he would at least talk with the reference librarian while he was at it.

Not many agents could say that the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. owed them anything, but she was lucky. Doubly lucky, because Fury had arrived back at the Triskelion with a rare gleam in his good eye. He hadn’t said anything, but June knew that he’d liked Amy enough to offer her the job.

Convincing Fury to hire Amy had been a strategic move on June’s part, not just because the new library needed her skills, but because Marcus needed her as well.

His story was an old one: a young, vulnerable kid who wanted to do something good became a science experiment, got turned into something he was never meant to be.

June knew that story by heart. She knew how it could end, and she hoped she could do enough to keep him from winding up alone and trapped into doing S.H.I.E.L.D.’s dirty work, or worse.

Still, bringing Marcus and Amy to S.H.I.E.L.D. carried a risk to June that she hoped they would never discover.

So far, she’d been safe here, in an environment where secrets were as commonplace as coffee. The agents weren’t looking for subtle inconsistencies among their own people, and if they noticed anything, they knew better than to ask. All the answers were classified anyway.

Still, June was well aware that the life she’d built for herself here could go away with one false move. She liked Amy and trusted her more than she’d trusted anyone in a long time, but if she or Marcus got too close and made too many connections…well.

She’d always been good at going unnoticed, keeping people from seeing the wrong things. An imperturbable smile, sugar-sweet words, and a comprehensive knowledge of the closest exit routes allowed her to slither out of nearly any situation she wanted to avoid.

It had kept her safe, but it had also kept her from doing a lot of good. People like Marcus, like Steve Rogers (whatever he might be like apart from that star-spangled uniform), didn’t hide. They lashed out at injustice; they kicked it in the teeth, regardless of how much it could hurt them.

June wasn’t like that. Not anymore.

Marcus, though.  
She hadn’t even met the kid, and she still felt an overwhelming sense of empathy for him. If she could change this one narrative, keep this one kid safe, it would be like...atonement.

There were things she could do to help, even if she had to keep her distance.

She sent Marcus some science books and Sudoku puzzles to keep him busy when the Triskelion scientists stopped giving him sedatives.

And she crossed her fingers, hoping Amy would accept that job offer. Even within S.H.I.E.L.D., Marcus would be safer with someone like her to look out for him. He shouldn’t have to be alone with all those scientists and agents hovering around, always wanting something from him. Amy would know what to do to make sure the pressure didn’t get to him.

So, June waited for that little green dot to show up on her screen.

It was on Tuesday afternoon.

She retreated to her desk after accompanying some workers who had been transferring a few locked cases of classified files to the new annex. When she opened the door, the dust was still settling among the stacks where the files had been.

She sat back at her worn desk (she’d be getting a new one soon!) and sneezed repeatedly before finger-combing her messy curls that seemed to grow fluffier in proportion to her stress levels.

There it was: the long-awaited chat box.

The time stamp on Amy’s last chat was marked three minutes ago, and the green dot had turned a sleepy orange before June could get to her computer, but at least they were both online now.

“So,” Amy had said. “Head of the research department? Curator of the largest known superhero collection? Yes please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The cat treats incident really happened to fearless beta reader beradan. Moral of the story: when your coworker hands you food, always read the packaging first.


	6. Chapter 6

“A.C.C.E.S.S.? You have got to be kidding me,” Amy said, reading the sign outside the new library annex.

“Yep! Archival and Circulation Consultants for Effective, Strategic Searching,” June replied, bouncing a little on her toes in a very un-S.H.I.E.L.D.-like manner.

“Good grief, who came up with that?”

“I...um...I thought you’d like it,” confessed June, drooping visibly. If Amy didn’t know better, she would have said that the characteristically fluffy hair straightened a little, of its own accord.

Amy winced. It was going to take a while for her to get used to being around June again. She was accustomed to reading her friend’s chat updates--sometimes peppy, often typed in all-caps--but being around each other in person was a little different.

When they were chatting online, Amy found it easier to say what she was feeling, like, “I’m super tired,” or “rough day @ work,” or simply send some grumpy-looking emojis. In person, she avoided talking about feelings, and June tended to take negative comments personally.

Despite their common interests, Amy and June were unlikely friends. In grad school, any professor or classmate would have marked them as opposing forces based on their appearances and personalities.

Fortunately, both women enjoyed defying expectations.

Toward the end of their first semester, Amy had had enough of her end-of-term group project and found herself complaining to the nearest classmate about it--who just so happened to be June. 

They discovered that they both put more work into group projects than their teammates did, and, while it was too late to request to be moved to the same group, they became inseparable study partners forever afterwards. If any professor suggested that perhaps the two should spend time working with other classmates, a glower from Amy paired with June’s cajoling was enough to resolve the issue in their favor.

Most days, the two found their differences amusing.

Take today, for instance. Amy showed up for orientation at S.H.I.E.L.D. in business formal so she could blend in with the dozens of agents she passed in the hallways here, all of whom were clad in black and seemed to know exactly where they were headed. June, on the other hand, sported a grey blazer over a bubblegum pink tulle skirt. If anything, she looked like the newcomer.

Suddenly reminded of their differences in personality as well as their diverging wardrobes, Amy smoothed a wrinkle out of her sensible pencil skirt.

“No, no, it’s good! I just...it’s still my first day here, and I think I’ve run across at least fifty different acronyms. They’re all starting to blur in my head. Hey, maybe I should start a spreadsheet.”

“Oh, good idea,” June replied, cheering up enough to open the door and gesture Amy inside. “I started a notebook a while ago. Pretty sure I came across it when we moved everything over. It should be...around here...somewhere.”

Although the door to A.C.C.E.S.S. was glass, the view through the window wasn’t enough to prepare Amy for the sight that awaited her inside. When she stepped inside the tower-like annex, she was enveloped in such a haze of natural light that she felt as if she had just walked outdoors. 

Once her eyes adjusted, however, she realized that she’d just spent too much time navigating the black marble hallways of the Triskelion, perpetually lit with fluorescent lights.

In fact, the curved walls of the library were punctuated with tall, narrow windows like arrow slits in the walls of a castle, providing just enough sunlight to flood the reading area in the central clearing, but not enough to damage the books in the shelves that shied away from the windows in concentric circles for four floors of balconies above the main one.

Recessed lighting combined with the sunlight to bathe the central reading area in a warm, natural glow. This circular space was brimming with an assortment of desks and tables, wooden chairs, couches, and comfy armchairs.

As Amy made a mental note to rearrange the reading area later to create better traffic flow, her eye was drawn to the reference desk on the east end of the room. Or perhaps she should have said reference area, as it was made up of one long desk flanked by two shorter desks with a few tables and chairs neatly lined up in front.

Instinctively, she drifted toward that end of the room. As she drew closer, she noticed that the second-floor balcony sheltered a row of bookshelves behind the main reference desk. A small collection of reference volumes--five dictionaries, an encyclopedia set, several worn-looking S.H.I.E.L.D. manuals, and a seven-volume collection of The Unclassified Papers of Director Peggy Carter--littered a few of the shelves, but the majority of space was left clear, waiting to be filled. 

She took a step toward the shelf that held the Carter papers (she never even knew they existed, and she wondered if she’d be able to take a couple of the volumes home for weekend reading) and then thought better of it. There was still too much to see.

To the left of the bookshelves, a set of stairs led up to the second floor balcony that, as far she could tell, held the first level of non-reference materials, and an elevator was also located nearby.

A booklift was embedded in the wall between the stairs and the bookshelves, surrounded by a small army of empty book carts. Amy had seen lifts like this before, but she’d never had to use one. With its intimidating metal doors, the contraption might have looked like an oven, but it could be used to send large stacks of books to the upper levels for shelving. In a multi-level building like this one, a booklift could be as close to magic as it got for busy librarians.

Past the reference shelves on the right, a row of offices were built in under the balcony. Amy walked over to investigate, but stopped at the first door.

There on the plate next to the door was her name: Amy Rudaski, Director of Research.

She ran a finger over the engraved letters, feeling a thrill rush through her body.

“You can go in, you know,” June said softly from behind her. Amy didn’t need to turn around to tell that the other librarian was smiling with gentle amusement.

She opened the door and turned on the light to find nothing more than a desk and an office chair in front of a wall of empty bookshelves. The possibility of the empty shelves and blank walls was almost overwhelming.

June brushed past her and waved a hand at the shelves.

“You’ll be able to fill those. And the ones at the reference desk. And--well. You’ll pretty much be in charge of purchasing materials for the whole library, with some input from me, of course.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” replied Amy, feeling a little out of breath.

June’s expression warmed with reassurance.

“I know, it’s okay. That’s why you’re taking an orientation now, and you’ll be under my supervision for the first six months. After that, we’ll see where you are. Hopefully within the year we’ll be co-leading the library together. Sounds fun, right?”

Amy thought it all sounded like a lot more responsibility than she had considered, but she wasn’t going to say that.

“So, um. If I’m directing reference and all this,” she countered, waving a hand out the door, “what are you in charge of?”

“Oh, I’m across the way there. Special Collections and Restricted Files.”

June nodded toward the west end of the library. Out the office door, past the reference desks, and beyond the reading area, Amy could see two large doors in the opposite wall. Large bronze letters marked one door as Special Collections. The other was left blank.

“It’s more than you might think,” the archivist continued. “For now, I’ll have the highest security clearance on staff. It would be a good idea for you to work on getting some clearances once you get settled in, but in the meantime, if anyone asks about classified stuff, you’ll have to direct them to me.”

Amy was about to ask what getting a security clearance would mean (Would it be like getting a degree? Would she have to take a test? Write a paper? Would she get interrogated?) when the clatter of a closing door echoed through the empty library.

Both librarians stepped out of the office to see a young, suit-clad man carrying a laptop into the annex and looking around with wide-eyed--wonder, or terror? It was hard to tell. He couldn’t have been any younger than a college grad, but to Amy he looked every inch like a student asking for help with his very first research paper.

June beamed at him and started to open her mouth, but Amy stepped forward first. She wasn’t going to pass up a chance to make a good first impression.

“Hello,” she said in her most polished professional tone. “Can I help you with something?”

He held out the laptop.

“Yeah. Can you, um, hack this for me?”

“Excuse me?”

She took a step back. Was hacking a computer a required skill for this job? She didn’t think so, but honestly it was hard to tell.

“My team confiscated this laptop on a mission, and we think it’s got some important intel on it, but it’s locked and the hard drive will self-destruct after three unsuccessful logins. My SO said you guys do that kind of thing?”

“Oh. Um…”

Amy turned to look at June for help just in time to see an unfamiliar man exit the office next to hers. He was unusually tall, and his long, if casual, stride brought him to the group in no time.

“Hey, buddy.” The newcomer addressed the agent with a slow grin. “I could help you with that, but I think you’re looking for Computer Services.”

He paused, and the agent nodded, flushing magenta up to his ears.

“You want to go out the way you came, and they’re right across the hall from us. Want me to show you?”

The agent stammered a bit, then said, “No, I’m good. Thanks.”

“Great! Next time you need to do some research, come back and see us.”

Once the agent had thanked him again with a chagrined grimace and left the library, the man turned to Amy and June, both of whom were gawking at him in astonishment.

“Heya,” he addressed them both, holding out his hand for them to shake. “I’m your tech services guy. Mitchell Franklin, but I go by Frank, not Mitch.”

As she shook Frank’s hand, Amy gave him an appraising stare. He was head and shoulders taller than she was, and muscular--his long-fingered hand grasped hers in a firm shake. That hairstyle was what Amy thought the kids these days were calling an undercut, and his dark-rimmed hipster glasses framed a pair of smirking brown eyes.

Amy thought he looked like someone who spent most of his time hiking while posing for manicured Instagram pictures, not sitting behind a computer.

“Hey,” June said, squinting up at him. Amy wondered if she was thinking about how out-of-place Frank looked, too. “I heard Computer Services was going to send us a tech person.”

“Yep, that would be me!”

He turned to Amy. “I’ll be working with the databases and online catalog, troubleshooting all the machines in here and teaching people how to use them, and whatever tech geekery y’all will need help with. Looks like my office is right next to yours, too.”

“Great,” she replied lamely.

Thankfully, Frank and June started chatting, and Amy took the opportunity to let her mind wander. It had been a long day, with too many hallways and acronyms and agents to take in. And it was only the first day. 

With a queasy feeling at the bottom of her stomach, she realized that she had more to learn than she’d anticipated, although right now she was more concerned with navigating the Triskelion and its unspoken rules than with the huge amount of responsibility that she was taking on. That mini-crisis would come later, she thought with grim humor.

She was going to have to ask someone if there was a Triskelion map she could study. And a list of dress code ins-and-outs. She had chalked up June’s bubblegum skirt to her friend’s quirky personality, but Frank’s dress shirt and skinny jeans combo made her wonder if librarians weren’t going to be held to the same dress code as other S.H.I.E.L.D. employees. What were non-agents called, anyway? Civilians? Consultants?

Pain stabbed at her temples, and she was almost surprised to realize that she had a headache, and that she’d probably had it for the past few minutes without noticing. She reached a hand up to massage the back of her neck.

Frank seemed to notice Amy’s movement instantly, and he straightened from leaning against the nearest desk.

“Well, I’d better get back to work. But hey, before I go, can you tell me when you’ll be filling this place with your library minions? It’s been super quiet in here.”

Oh boy. She had forgotten that she’d also be in charge of hiring the library staff.

“We’ll be looking at applications just as soon as Amy gets settled in,” June answered, gently brushing her friend’s arm.

Amy stiffened instinctively. That was another thing she’d have to get used to--the touching. She had eventually warmed up to the way June reached out all the time, always hugging, always touching a hand for reassurance or leaning into someone during a movie or picking stray hairs off people’s shirts.

It wasn’t that Amy minded now. It was just that, these past few years in New Haven, she hadn’t made friends that she was okay with touching, and she had learned to shy away from some coworkers and library patrons who weren’t keen on personal space.

“Awesome! Well, I’m sure you’ll pick good people. I believe in you,” Frank said.

He headed back to his office by walking between the two librarians, giving each of them a radiant grin and a quick, friendly shoulder squeeze.

Amy flinched this time, without really meaning to, but he didn’t seem to notice. She had no idea what to think about this IT guy, or whether his touching would be a problem, but she did know two things.

First, it had been a really long day. And second, all she wanted right now was to retreat to her new apartment with the first volume of the Carter papers and a giant mug of tea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The A.C.C.E.S.S. annex is pretty much the Triskelion's version of Ravenclaw Tower.


	7. Chapter 7

Amy quickly discovered that it was very hard to stay annoyed with Frank, the Instagram-worthy IT guy.

Even when he listened to music without headphones--typically an unforgivable fault in her book--he usually managed to get back in her good graces.

Some days, she would be sitting in her office going through a stack of book catalogs nearly the height of her computer monitor when she’d hear the opening chords of some pop song from the next office. She’d leap out of her chair and stalk over to Frank’s open door, only to start laughing when she saw the lean, muscular techie mouthing Adele lyrics while rolling his eyes dramatically.

He’d trap her into staying by trying to get her to sing along until the end of the song (she’d shake her head vigorously and laugh even harder), and then he’d give her a Snickers from his stash in one of his desk drawers before picking an argument about which Avenger was cooler (he was an Iron Man fanboy, and she...well).

Things were lapsing into a comfortable routine for Amy, both with her responsibilities and with her coworkers. She and June had begun filling the library with competent new hires; some were recent MLIS grads, while a few were recruits from the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy of Communications who showed more interest in helping other agents research than in becoming analysts themselves.

Having so many fresh faces around was actually comforting, in a way. Amy had thought that training and managing a staff of brand-new librarians would drain all her energy, and some days it did. But most of the time it was refreshing to be around people her age who really loved what they did for a living, who saw that they were doing something truly important.

It sounded trite, she knew.

She figured she’d spent enough time trying to justify her career to people old enough to be her parents who droned on about the death of the library and the tyranny of technology that it was just really satisfying to watch the three catalogers on staff get excited about a huge pile of newly-accessioned books, or to help one of the librarians answer her first reference question successfully, or to hear the _whiskwhiskwhisk_ of a book cart being wheeled past her office by an enthusiastic shelver.

Gradually, she picked up one of Frank’s habits: she left her office door open when she could (although she always, always used headphones when listening to music). When she did this, she was surprised to find that, despite her lifelong habit of looking up from her work as if she was about to murder whoever had interrupted her, people actually wanted to talk to her.

All of her reference librarians came in to ask her for on-the-job advice, but it was more than that. Once Roger, one of the catalogers, discovered that Amy laughed almost uncontrollably over puns, he began dropping by her office whenever he thought of a new one. Karla and Jen came over to talk about period dramas whenever they ran out of books to shelve. And she had agreed to teach Cora, one of June’s archivists, how to knit during their lunch breaks.

Yet, in spite of the camaraderie that was growing amongst the librarians, A.C.C.E.S.S. itself was still surprisingly quiet. A few agents came in now and then, but the place was nowhere near the busy research hub that Amy had envisioned when she’d signed on, and despite her burgeoning collection of materials on superhumans, she still hadn’t seen a single Avenger.

It was just as well, she thought. The library’s selection was far from well developed, and she needed time to continue training her research staff. She’d chosen Jen and Ryan, two of the reference librarians, to help her develop a training seminar to help agents brush up on their research skills and to introduce them to A.C.C.E.S.S. resources. Once that program started, maybe the library would become more visible.

Another thing Amy found disappointing was that she hadn’t seen or heard anything of Marcus since the night he’d been taken on board the helicarrier. She didn’t even know if he was at the Triskelion. A few times she had considered asking June, but so many times the answer to other questions had been “That’s classified,” or “Sorry, but that’s level such-and-such information,” that she was almost afraid to ask. Plus, they’d been so busy lately that she hardly had time to think about it.

The new year turned as December became January, and January became February with a thick blanket of snow that muffled D.C. with the force of a smothering pillow.

Accustomed to cold weather, Amy was surprised that the advent of snow sent everyone here into a tailspin. Even agents who seemed to spend most of their time bragging to library staff about classified missions in hazardous locations spooked at the mention of winter weather.

Amy had been all too ready to go to work in the snow anyway if it hadn’t been for the fact that she shared an apartment building in Arlington (and a carpool) with June, Roger, and Karla, all of whom insisted on a three-day vacation while they waited for the roads to clear. 

She had trudged through the snow all the way out to June’s car, but no one was there yet.

Her phone bleeped with a text from June.

“What do you think you’re doing”

“Going to work. Where are you??” She was thankful for the gloves she’d bought at the beginning of the season that were made for texting. It wasn’t that cold out, but even then, she didn’t want to risk getting dry, chapped hands.

“In my apt. I can see you from here.”

Amy looked up, squinting in the frail winter sunlight. It was silly; June lived on the sixth floor, so it wasn’t like Amy could see her from the parking lot.

“Come inside. There’s no way we’re going to dig that car out of the snow to get to work,” June said again.

“If we all work together, we won’t be that late,” Amy offered.

“...”

“Please tell me I’m not the only one here who has a folding shovel in their car.”

“You have a WHAT”

“Folding shovel?” Amy was confused and a little frustrated. Also, she was starting to get cold.

“In your CAR”

“...yes?”

A brief radio silence from June before she replied with, “What do you need it for, burying bodies???”

Amy glared up at what she thought was June’s window, hands on her hips.

“Look,” June texted again, “the metro won’t be running anyway. Nobody else is going to be there. Karla’s already at my apt and Roger wants to start a Harry Potter marathon.”

Amy was still reading the texts when her phone bleeped again: “COME INSIDE.”

Suddenly realizing that staying indoors with a cup of hot chocolate sounded better than shoveling out the car and braving the roads (because who knew how or if they took care of snowy roads this far south), she made her way back to the building.

Somehow, she ended up spending the entire day with the other librarians there.

While they were snowbound, Amy learned that Roger was a nerd about pancakes (among many, many other things), that Karla knew how to make the best cup of coffee, and that June was lousy at solving crossword puzzles.

She didn’t really know how it happened, but she started spending free time with these people. Friday night started to mean librarians and drinks and movies and board games. Some Saturday mornings, she’d wake up and wander over to June’s apartment for breakfast, only to find out that Roger had shown up two minutes before her and was already helping himself to a stack of French toast and that Karla was on her way, too.

Those mornings usually involved an argument over whether pancakes or waffles were better (Amy and Roger were for pancakes, Karla was for waffles, and June aggressively refused to pick a side). When they discovered that Amy could make better pancakes even than Roger, the next Saturday breakfast happened at her place. Karla showed up a half hour late in her pajamas, carrying her own waffle iron.

A library-wide movie night happened at the apartment, not long after the snowbound incident.

At first, Amy wasn’t so sure about spending time with that many people after hours, especially people she didn’t know very well. But...it was fun.

She learned that Frank never showed up for a movie night without a bag of gourmet popcorn, that Cora could quote the original Star Wars trilogy by heart while Ryan hummed the theme music, and that Jen could beat all of them at Apples to Apples without hardly trying.

This life here at S.H.I.E.L.D., with a library of her own to run--it wasn’t so bad. She might even be making friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have fudged some details for reasons.
> 
> In the real world, a bunch of librarians wouldn't make enough to live in Arlington, but I wanted them to live close to the Triskelion. My headcanon is that S.H.I.E.L.D. covers housing for their employees and tries to keep them as nearby as possible.
> 
> They do have a really short commute. Usually, June drives Amy, Roger, and Karla to the metro, and they take that in to the Triskelion stop, which is also a fudged detail. The real orange line runs right through (past? under?) TR Island, and it's hard to imagine that the MCU metro would NOT have a stop there. The librarians can also drive all the way to work if they feel like braving the traffic (unlikely).


	8. Chapter 8

Noise levels at A.C.C.E.S.S. grew steadily as the snow melted and February began to turn toward an early spring. The librarians returned from being snowbound with renewed determination, and every week brought more agents and analysts to the library.

Of course, this came with its own set of issues.

Several books and a few loaner tablets had already been lost, and there always seemed to be someone who would rather flirt with the cute reference staff than ask them serious questions.

Annoying patrons might be better than none at all, but they weren’t fun to deal with.

So when a flustered Karla knocked on the doorframe of Amy’s office one Thursday, Amy expected she would have to confront another problem agent.

Instead, Karla said, “Amy, we’ve got a kid out here who won’t leave until you come out and talk to him.”

Marcus’s face appeared above Karla’s head. He gave Amy a cheesy grin and a small wave.

“We’re all good here, Karla. You can get back to the desk now.” Amy smiled encouragingly at her, and she retreated to the desk.

“You,” she continued, pointing at Marcus, “quit antagonizing my staff.”

“Nice to see you, Marcus. Where you been? Catch any bad guys lately?” he teased in falsetto.

By now, she had reached the doorway, and he looked down at her with an incandescent grin. She wasn’t certain what to say, and for some reason her first instinct was to give him a hug, but she wasn’t sure she should. For a split second, her arms twitched outward, then froze.

He must’ve seen the movement, because before she could think of a comeback or step away, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her into his chest.

“I did miss you,” she countered, pulling herself away as soon as she’d reached her limit as far as hugs were concerned. “Maybe not trailing after you and mending injuries at all hours of the night, but you know.”

He laughed in return, and she dragged over to a chair in her office and pelted him with peppermints until he told her everything that had happened since the helicarrier.

S.H.I.E.L.D. had been keeping him in the Triskelion’s Science and Technology wing under the observation of so many white-coated scientists that they’d all blended together in Marcus’s imagination, a bleached amoeba with many hands stabbing with needles and many voices asking the same questions over and over.

Now that they’d determined that he was stable and wouldn’t fly into a murderous rage or implode at the push of someone else’s button (as if he couldn’t have told them that already), he was allowed some free time. He could explore the Triskelion, even go outside. When the next school year started, when they’d given him all the tests they had to give, he could go to the Academy, learn how to be a real superhero.

Christmas-light joy lit up his face when he said this, and Amy couldn’t help smiling in return. She bit back the words _but you are a real superhero_.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said finally. “The Operations Academy will take people who haven’t finished high school, but I still have to get my GED before I can apply.”

“I knew you wouldn’t show up just to talk to a boring librarian,” Amy teased.

“I would have come anyway, I promise!”

“Sure…” She smirked at him, and he huffed and rolled his eyes in return.

“So,” she prompted. “GED. What can we help you with?”

“You got any study materials? I can take the test as soon as I turn 17, and my birthday is next month, so I want to get a head start.”

“Good study habits, as usual,” she noted with approval. “We’ll see what we can find here, and if we don’t have what you need, I’ll have Karla order it for you through interlibrary loan.”

She rose from her desk and headed toward the open door, but he reached for her wrist and gently pulled her back.

“Wait, there’s one more thing.”

She took a step back and leaned against the front of her desk, waiting.

“Ok, well, remember that last night in New Haven, when Centipede got me and then S.H.I.E.L.D. got me, and then everything went to shit? Well, I need you to finish that mission for me.”

“You need me to round up some bad guys for you?”

Amy laughed so hard she nearly snorted until she realized that Marcus squinting at her with real seriousness.

“No, I want you to _finish_ it. To make sure...ah. Why is this so hard?”

Rolling his eyes, he tilted his head back as far as it would go and stayed that way for a while.

Amy figured it would be best to wait for him to speak first, so she bit her lip and scuffed her toe on the carpet in silence.

“So,” he started again, “I volunteer with an after-school club--or I used to, before everything--helping little kids practice their reading, playing games, stuff like that. Well, one of the kids used to come in covered in bruises. After the whole supersoldier experiment, I thought I could do something about it.”

He hesitated for a moment when he saw her raise her eyebrows.

“Hey, I did my research! It took me that long to find out where the kid lived and what was going on. I was hoping you could help. I just...I just can’t leave it like that. It’s not right.”

Amy found satisfaction in straight lines and tidy office supplies and color-coded notebooks; she found purpose in organizing, in setting things right.

There was a right way to read a book, a right way to run a library, a right way to rescue someone.

And there was a wrong way.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” she shouted. “No, you. You didn’t think. That’s just it.”

Marcus’s eyes widened, and he sat farther back in his chair. Clearly he hadn’t expected such a strong reaction.

Amy had run out of words to vent her frustration. Abruptly, she dumped all the pens and pencils out of her pen mug onto her desk. She grabbed them up again in a handful and thumped the ends on her desk to straighten them all.

As she put the pens back in the mug one by one, as loudly as possible, she tried to sort through her aggravation and string the right words together.

All this time, she’d been worried about Marcus, when there had been someone even more vulnerable and at risk that she could have been helping.

“Marcus.” She glared at him over the pen mug. “You thought this kid was in an abusive situation and you just. You didn’t tell anyone? Marcus, there are appropriate steps that I could have--oh, good grief. Why didn’t you just tell me?”

He massaged the back of his neck, throwing her a puzzled, innocent look.

“Don’t know. I guess I just didn’t think about it.”

“Of COURSE not.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s your problem. But see, I have RESOURCES! We could have gotten this kid out of a bad situation if you had just talked to me. But no, you had to do it your way.”

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” Marcus breathed, his tone was a little shaky, more from the impact of her words than the pens. “I didn’t know.”

After a moment, Amy took a deep breath and searched the kid’s face to make sure he was ok.

“Sorry for yelling at you. I didn’t mean to overreact.”

He laughed, a sudden, dry sound in the now-still office. “You know I can take it. I guess I just...I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have told you earlier.”

“Yes, you should have.” She sighed heavily. “The thing is, kid, you don’t have to be a hero on your own. You can’t. The harder you try to do things yourself, the more you’ll fail, because you’ll just have to reinvent the wheel each time, and eventually you’ll wear yourself out.

“Look. You did the right thing in coming to me at the beginning of all this, because I had more knowledge and resources, and you had more muscle, and when we combined our skills, we were better together. And now you have an entire intelligence agency to draw from. Heck, you could probably even network with the Avengers and ask them for advice if you wanted to.”

Marcus grinned at this.

“I guess what I’m trying to say,” Amy continued, “is that you don’t have all the resources to just do whatever you want. You have to think before you act. Do your research. Reach out to people who can help. And I’m not just saying this to you because you’re young or anything. Even agents who’ve been trained at the Academy and have worked at S.H.I.E.L.D. for years need help sometimes. That’s why we started the library in the first place.”

He leaned back against the wall, arms resting on bent knees, fingers tapping restlessly against his shins.

Amy guessed her lecture had gone on long enough.

“So.” He let out a long breath. “Would it help if I gave you a name and an address? Can you still help that little kid?”

“Yes--yes, that would help.”

After she collected the information and escorted him to the reference desk so Karla could help him find GED materials, she returned to her office to make a few phone calls about the kid Marcus had told her about. By the time she hung up the phone for the last time, he was studying in the reading area, a mess of books and articles on the desk in front of him.

She began to leave her office to tell him the news, then turned back to grab her binder of Level 1 clearance study materials from her bookshelf.

When she arrived at Marcus’s desk moments later, she was prepared to smile and offer homework help and be as pleasant as she could. That is, until she saw him reach orange-powdered fingers into his satchel, heard the crinkle of cellophane, and watched the hand return full of Cheetos.

“Were you raised in a barn?” she teased.

His surprised expression morphed into a smirk, and he made a show of shoving the snack in his mouth and chewing slowly.

“Dammit, lady,” he said, grinning around a mouthful of half-chewed Cheetos. “Supersoldiers gotta eat.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Despite everything, Amy found herself sliding into the chair next to him and giving him the warmest smile she had. Apparently Frank wasn’t the only one around who was impossible to stay mad at.

“Hey, you know what?” she spoke again. “That kid is going to be ok, thanks to you. The people I talked to are going to make sure he’s safe.”

Still smiling, he turned his gaze to the book in front of him as if to hide his reaction.

“Thanks to you, too. You’re right, you know. About reaching out to people.”

“Of course I’m right. You should’ve learned by now that I’m _always_ right.”

This made his shoulders shake with silent laughter, and he turned to her with raised eyebrows.

“Okay, fine. Maybe not always.”

She pointed at the binder. “Mind if I study with you?”

He shrugged, but looked pleased. “It’s your library.”

There’s always that one person that gets under your skin, she thought as they both turned to the books before them. That one person you never expected to get along with until suddenly, or slowly, before you noticed it, that person seemed to have tapped into your brain wavelength and somehow became someone you couldn’t imagine living without

For Amy Rudaski, Librarian of S.H.I.E.L.D.,  there were a lot of people like that.

Even after so many years she was still getting used to June Bachman, but as she looked up and saw the archivist walking toward the restricted files vault, she found it hard to believe that there was ever a time she wouldn’t count June as a friend.

Just as Amy was about to turn back to her binder, June looked up and caught her eye. The archivist was distracted by her iPod and an armful of files, but she raised her eyebrows in a silent hello.

And then there was Frank. Across the way, he was leading an agent to one of the media rooms to demonstrate some new piece of technology that A.C.C.E.S.S. had just acquired. Never too busy, he paused mid-step to shoot Amy an enthusiastic wave.

She would never have thought of Frank as someone she _could_ be friends with. He was too--well, polished. And annoying. But somehow, she didn’t mind as much as she’d thought she would.

She liked that he kept his office door open, so she could complain at him. She liked that he always talked to her, even when he’d spent the whole day explaining tech to agents and librarians alike and was clearly exhausted. She liked that he sent her memes over S.H.I.E.L.D.’s chat function and sent her smiley faces when she replied with cool informative articles.

There were Ryan and Cora, Karla and Jen and Roger, and all the other new hires she was getting to know, not just as employees or coworkers, but as friends.

There was Marcus, sitting next to her with his GED study materials and his covert Cheetos.

Oh wait, no. He was pulling out the bag of Cheetos and setting them next to her on the desk, gesturing for her to take some.

She was still trying to figure him out. He was a kid to babysit, her little brother, her friend--all at the same time.

Well. Just this once.

She took a handful of Cheetos and popped them in her mouth one by one. If the notes in her binder got orange dust on them, well. At least it wasn’t a library book.

 

 

**Epilogue**

“Where’s Romanoff?” Agent Victoria Hand wondered aloud, finger-combing a strand of her scarlet-streaked hair behind her ear. “We were supposed to brief at 0900, and she hasn’t shown yet. Usually it’s you we’re waiting for, Barton.”

Agent Clint Barton grunted in reply before downing another mug of coffee.

“Nat’ll be here,” he said when he had drained the cup.

“She better. I’m on a tight schedule, and I hope you know I have better things to do than babysit you two.”

Barton was just grabbing a handful of donuts from the tray in the S.H.I.E.L.D. conference room, while Hand took another glance at her watch and rolled her eyes impatiently, when Natasha Romanoff walked in, arms full with two tablets, a book, and several sheaves of printed articles.

She set all of these on the conference table with a sigh of satisfaction.

“You can go now, Agent Hand,” she began smugly. “Barton and I are ready to begin our next mission.”

Hand tensed.

“I know you have a lot of experience in the field, Agent Romanoff, but our records indicate that this mission will be taking you to a region that you’ve never been to before. Like it or not, this briefing would be to your own advantage.”

Romanoff turned to Barton, her eyes lighting on the remaining donuts in his hand.

“Give me one of those.”

He hesitated, considering the consequences of refusing breakfast food to one of the world’s best assassins.

When she caught the donut in mid-air, it landed on her outstretched pointer finger and had barely begun to spin when she took a bite.

“This,” she said around a powdery bite, gesturing at the pile of papers and tablets on the table “is our briefing. Ten photocopied articles, one language dictionary, and several documents downloaded to my tablet. All about the culture and language of our field.”

Hand slid a thinner stack of papers across the table toward the field agents.

“This was unnecessary, Agent Romanoff. Our analysts have already done this kind of research for you.”

“Shhhh,” Romanoff said, over the tablet she was sharing with Barton. “I wanted an excuse to check out the library--pun totally intended. And you should make sure the analysts take a look at it, too. They have cool toys like this…”

She slapped the tablet away from Barton and set it flat on the table. With a push of a button on the side of the tablet, a 3-D topographic map hovered in holograph form over the conference table.

“Sweet,” Barton breathed.

Hand raised her eyebrows, clearly impressed. She now had an extra twenty minutes to get a cup of real coffee instead of the conference room crap that Barton had already mostly finished.

“You said you got this from...the library?”

Romanoff nodded.

Barton tossed his partner another donut.

“We have one of those?” he asked.

“We do now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More fics about librarians and superheroes are coming soon, so if you enjoyed this one, please keep an eye on the Librarians of S.H.I.E.L.D. series. Thanks for reading! :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to beradan and imacutemoose, my very patient beta readers!


End file.
